Nothing will wreck your day quite like dropping your keys
down the elevator shaft at 7:15am…
By Mary Chamberlin
I was running late for an obscenely early meeting. My friends were out of town, and I had just finished walking their dog. I needed to change my shoes before heading to work. Unfortunately, that was not to be. My keys fell out of my hand and slipped neatly into the crack between the elevator and the floor. I heard the far away clang as they hit the ground in the bowels of my apartment building.
I realized that somehow, even if just a little bit, I had started to change. Don’t get me wrong. I still cursed a blue streak and shook my fist, but there was a little voice inside me saying, “meh. What are you gonna do?”
In times past, that little voice would probably have been telling me to kick a puppy.
It started when my friend, Troy, bodily dragged me to his Sunday morning version of church; Jessie’s 11:30 class. I attacked ashtanga yoga with the same mindset that I had attacked running, mountain-bike racing, diving, kickboxing, climbing, and my career. Nothing was going to stop me. Come hell or high water, I was going to get my toe in my ear. Advanced people practice chatauranga? Ha. I’ve done pushups before. What could “yoga” have for me that hurtling down the North Shore on a bike couldn’t?
Ha, yourself.
I came to yoga because I thought I needed an antidote to my stressful job and the strict training I imposed on myself for other sports, but now I realize I stayed because I needed an antidote to myself.
I have always been a bit of a stress case. I remember pulling all-nighters when I was in high school. I would get wrapped up in something, and all my other work would fall by the wayside until 3am, when I’d come up for air and realize that I still had other things to get done. It never crossed my mind to just skip an assignment, because that, obviously, would be immediately followed by the apocalypse.
I hacked my way through school and then landed in a cube. On my first day, my boss led me into my cube and as I stepped in, I swear I heard a cell door slam. Not too long after, I was miserable. Then, I got a new job with a fancier title and more stress. After the novelty wore off, I found it increasingly difficult to drag myself out of bed in the morning. But because I was doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing, I couldn’t understand how I could possibly not be fifty shades of happy.
The thing, for me, was back bending. Occasionally, I would push myself into urdvha dandasana, trying to focus on the mechanics of it, and waves of anxiety and rage would rush over me.
I felt like someone was pulling my ribcage apart. I would come down and lie on my back, covering my face and trying to stay calm. Yoga was supposed to make me feel all zen, but I was leaving feeling shaken and fragile. It came to a head for me after Eugene’s backbending workshop when I seriously considered torching a cop car.
Don’t worry, I didn’t.
But I did realize that the anger was coming from somewhere that likely wasn’t my asana practice. I have a theory that certain poses will trigger a physical manifestation of an emotion, and if that emotion is one that you have been avoiding, it will maul you. Turns out, I had some serious anger and anxiety issues to deal with. So I swallowed my pride and made an appointment with a psychologist. I discovered, among other things, that my anxiety and anger stem partially from my need to “attack” everything. That if I don’t follow the hardest path, and excel at it, I am somehow failing myself. Many of the major decisions I’ve made in my life were based on security rather than following my passion or trusting my gut. If I wasn’t absolutely sure what to do, I would do what I thought was best, not necessarily what I thought was the best for me.
I lasted less than a year at that first job, and then moved on. My cube is smaller, even though my title is fancier. I am surrounded by passionate, driven people who work hard and care deeply about what they do. On paper, I really do have a rock star engineering job. Which makes it difficult to walk away from it. There is the voice in my head (I’m pretty sure it’s my dad), which tells me that I am being an idiot. Look at your benefits! Your RRSP contributions! Two whole weeks of vacation per year! Are you stupid?
Meeting the teachers, staff, and students at Ashtanga Yoga Montreal, I have been inspired again and again by their stories. From dancing through pain and exhaustion, swinging from a trapeze despite broken biceps, living all over the world as performers and then starting a business and raising a family in one fell swoop, moving to Canada without knowing a soul or having a plan, reconstructing a life after a breakup, or simply balancing work and family while maintaining a yoga practice, I continually meet people that inspire me.
It’s because they have found their passion and are making huge sacrifices to pursue it. You don’t put yourself through that kind of torture unless you’ve found something that you truly can’t not do. There are also people I see regularly in class that I have never spoken to that inspire me as well, moving through stiffness, pain, and sometimes while carrying another human. And it wasn’t the determination to get that dang toe in the ear, it was the softness and respect with which they approached the practice.
(“I won’t do bakasana today because I weigh forty-five more pounds than I did nine months ago.”)
I learned that I had to start applying some of that forgiveness to my own practice and to my own life. So I did some soul searching, burnt some incense, smoked some peyote, went on a vision quest, (I didn’t really do that, but I did have a beer in Vermont and stare at a gazebo for five or six hours while I sorted through things) and admitted to myself what I’d known all along…
So I’m venturing off into the great unknown. I’m getting out of the cube and off the merry-go-round. I’m going somewhere new, and I’m starting over. I might go live in the woods and hang out with trees and bears and stuff. That would be awesome. I have an idea of what I’m going to do professionally, but I’m also allowing myself to change that plan, as well. The climb to happiness will be long. I’ll probably get distracted on the way by an interesting rock or a squirrel or something. I guarantee I forgot the map. But at least I’ve found the trailhead.
Oh, and I never did get my keys back from that elevator shaft…
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Yogi Confidential….
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